TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/102990/1029520.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 12.7 KB | 241 lines

                                                                                PROFILE, Page 96

A Senator Of Candor Most Rare


Nebraskan BOB KERREY, war hero and restaurateur, won fame as
Debra Winger's live-in Governor. Now his unpolitical ways are
turning heads.

By HAYS GOREY


    In their endless struggle to please and appease special
interests and large voter blocs, most of the 535 members of
Congress have succeeded mainly in diminishing themselves. Their
fundamental obligation to order the nation's finances has given
way to the politician's primal instinct: inflict no pain;
ruffle no feathers; get re-elected.

    How, then, to explain Bob Kerrey? The junior Senator from
Nebraska, whose personal valor was certified for all time when
he lost a leg in Vietnam, is equally fearless wading through
political minefields. Opposing a Senate resolution supporting
George Bush's gulf policy, adopted 97-3, Kerrey declared, "No
American should die in the Persian Gulf in order to hold down
the price of gasoline." Impatient with the inadequacy and
dithering of the budget debate, he predicted, "We will pass a
budget that will reduce the deficit by $34 billion, the economy
will continue to weaken, and the deficit will grow beyond $300
billion." Feather-ruffling talk.

    Beyond the borders of his native Nebraska and outside the
domains of the political cognoscenti, Kerrey, 47, is known, if
at all, as actress Debra Winger's sometime boyfriend. But since
taking his seat in the U.S. Senate 21 months ago, J. Robert
Kerrey has emerged as an intriguing figure in a capital where
blunt talk is a scarce commodity that attracts lots of
attention. Explains Democratic pollster Harrison Hickman, who
has worked for Kerrey: "He isn't caught up in status quo
thinking. I don't know if I have seen anyone quite so fearless."
There is of course a dissenting view. "He's long on rhetoric,"
grumbles Scott Matter, former executive director of the
Nebraska Republican Party. "Almost like a stage performer. But
it's hard to come up with any accomplishments." Still, in
Nebraska, where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by
70,000, Kerrey, a slender, earnest man with outsize eyes, has
won two statewide elections -- for Governor in 1982 and for
Senator in 1988 -- in which Republican support was essential.
Dick Mercer, a cattle rancher from Kearney and a lifelong
Republican, in 1988 headed up an organization called Third
Congressional District Republicans for Kerrey. Why? Says
Mercer: "I never met a person like Bob Kerrey." Members of the
Navy Sea/Air/Land (SEAL) team who followed Kerrey into battle
in Vietnam voice similar sentiments. The fact that he lost a
leg and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for
"conspicuous gallantry" is part of Kerrey's political appeal.
It also shields him from some of the voter wrath that would
rain down on other politicians if they dared to be equally
outspoken.

    The Kerrey candor dates back to childhood. But it first
registered strongly on Washington's political Richter scale
when he defended the right to burn the flag, while George Bush,
also a war hero, was leading a posse of television camera crews
to the Iwo Jima Memorial in Virginia, where he grandly
condemned such acts. More recently, Kerrey has questioned the
Persian Gulf deployment and flatly opposed a $20 billion arms
sale to Saudi Arabia. Even before he first ran for office,
Kerrey supported amnesty for Vietnam draft dodgers. These
positions have not won much favor among generally conservative
Nebraskans. Nor did his role at a Senate Agriculture Committee
hearing, where Kerrey so aggressively upbraided Agriculture
Secretary Clayton Yeutter (who is from his home state) that the
chairman, Vermont's Patrick Leahy, whispered in Kerrey's ear,
"We usually leave our grenades  in the anteroom."

    Born into a large (three brothers, three sisters)
middle-class family in Lincoln, Kerrey received an early
baptism in political discourse around the dinner table. The
discussions "were always issue-oriented," recalls his sister,
Jessie Rasmussen. "Never partisan. To this day I don't know if
our parents were Republicans or Democrats." The younger Kerreys
were taught by example to express and adhere to their beliefs.
Before the 1960 presidential election, a dinner guest argued
heatedly that if John Kennedy won, the Pope in reality would
be running the country. When James Kerrey, Bob's father,
persistently rejected the notion, the angered guest bolted out
of the house.

    Despite the family sport of wrestling with issues, Kerrey
gave no early indication that within him beat the heart of a
skillful, if unorthodox, politician. High school classmates
remember him as bright, fun loving, outspoken and very
competitive, but he was not a B.M.O.C. At the University of
Nebraska he held a few minor student and fraternity offices,
dated often and pursued a degree in pharmacy, which he was
awarded in 1966. By then, U.S. participation in the war in
Vietnam was escalating and Kerrey enlisted. "I was pretty
gung-ho," he says now. In March 1969 he led his SEAL team on
a night raid against an enemy unit holed up in a cave. Struck
by a grenade, he suffered a wound that required amputation of
his right leg just below the knee. Ironically, he was the only
U.S. casualty during the raid. Kerrey has difficulty plumbing
his own feelings about having been crippled at age 26. In 1986
he appeared before a 900-student class at the University of
California at Santa Barbara as a guest lecturer on the impact
of the Vietnam War. Recalls Walter Capps, who initiated the
course: "He gave a textbook lecture. It was almost as if he was
going for tenure. A woman student complained, `You haven't
told us how you felt.' Kerrey looked at me helplessly but I
just stared at the floor. He told the class he couldn't tell
them -- he would have to do something he usually does only in
the shower -- sing." Then Kerrey in a steady baritone
talked/sang And the Band Played "Waltzing Matilda," the
mournful lament of a World War I Australian who lost a leg in
battle. The lyrics include the gut-wrenching line "Never knew
there were worse things than dying." Says Capps: "When he turned
and limped off the stage, nearly everyone wept."

    After a long convalescence, briefly interrupted in 1970,
when the entire family traveled to Washington to see President
Nixon award him the Congressional Medal of Honor, Kerrey
abandoned plans to open his own pharmacy because the Lincoln
area was "overstocked." Instead, he and sister Jessie's husband
Dean Rasmussen launched a restaurant they called Grandma's
because Kerrey wanted it to feature "grandmother's kind of
food." Recalls Jessie: "Dean and Bob were everything at first

worked almost around the clock," says Jessie. Today the
brothers-in-law own six restaurants and two fitness centers,
employ 500 people and are easily millionaires. There seemed no
reason why Kerrey would not continue as a successful small
businessman, but by 1981, he had grown restless. With small
groups of family and close friends, the talk frequently had an
"Is this all there is?" theme. Maybe, Kerrey  mused, he would
try politics. Sure, everyone agreed. Mayor? The legislature?
No, said Kerrey. He was thinking of running for Governor.
Rasmussen was astonished. "Bob was not that well-known -- some
community involvement, businessman, war hero. But he didn't
know politicians, and they didn't know him." Adds Rasmussen:
"But it was typical of him to go for the  top job." There were
other problems: his marriage had ended in divorce, hardly a
plus for a politician; he had changed his registration from
Republican to Democrat only three years earlier; and the
incumbent Republican Governor was heavily favored to win a
second term. Kerrey had little initial party support in the
primary -- he had to rely on himself, friends and family.

    Nevertheless, in a major upset, Kerrey in November of 1982
edged Governor Charles Thone by 7,000 votes. Buffeted by a
sagging farm economy and fascinated by the charismatic
newcomer, enough Republicans crossed over to send Kerrey to the
state house. Kerrey inherited a state debt of $24 million,
which he attacked with budget cuts, a temporary new tax and a
broadened tax base, "none of which was popular," he notes.
After dating Winger several times (they met when she was on
location in Nebraska for a movie), he moved her into the
Governor's mansion and somehow his approval rating in staid
Nebraska remained in the mid-70s.

    Then as his first term neared an end and the state's surplus
reached $49 million, Kerrey withdrew from politics as suddenly
as he had entered. "I had accomplished what I wanted to. It was
time to move on," he says simply. Scott Matter, whose party
regained the state house thanks to Kerrey's decision not to
run, thinks his sudden disinterest is typical and unsettling.
"He's got a short attention span," says  Matter. "He's
opportunistic. He could get bored with the Senate too." Kerrey
concedes the point. "I could," he admits. Observes pollster
Hickman: "He could walk away from politics and have a very
fulfilling life. He takes issues a lot more seriously than he
takes himself."

    Kerrey's re-entry into politics came sooner than he wanted.
When Democratic Senator Edward Zorinsky died suddenly in 1987,
Governor Kay Orr named a Republican to the vacancy. After a
semester teaching a course on Vietnam at Santa Barbara, Kerrey
decided to run for the seat and defeated the appointee, David
Karnes, by 100,000 votes. Groused Orr: "Nebraskans are having
a love affair with Bob Kerrey," a remark that drives Kerrey
intimates up the wall with its implication that he is more
style than substance.

    In Washington, Kerrey is usually in his office by 6 a.m. He
jogs six miles (on his good leg and his prosthesis) almost
daily, has run marathons, reads voluminously. "He always does
his homework," says Leahy. On weekends, he usually returns to
Nebraska, where he divides his time between constituents and
his children, Ben, 15, and Lindsey, 13, who live in Omaha with
their mother. On longer recesses, he is likely to travel abroad
(early this year to Vietnam and Cambodia,  in part for
sentimental reasons, chiefly to shore up his foreign policy
credentials). He is critical of the Bush Administration's Asian
policy, but has yet to formulate one of his own, which he
believes is a President's role, not a Senator's. Congressional
colleagues, including some Democrats, fault Kerrey as unfocused
and naive about Senate customs. Early this year, for example,
he introduced a bill to revamp the savings-and-loan bailout
agency, the Resolution Trust Corporation, even though he is not
a member of the Banking Committee. "Kerrey should have known
better," says a House Republican. "With five members under
investigation in the Keating scandal, the Senate isn't about
to revisit the S&L scandal in an election year."

    But Kerrey does things his way. He supports campaign-finance
reform but not compulsory public funding. He accepts PAC
contributions but refuses honorariums for speeches and public
appearances. Despite his need for Republican votes, Kerrey is
blistering in assessing the Bush presidency. On the Persian
Gulf, Kerrey says, "I am profoundly uneasy about the instant
deployment of over 100,000 American troops, sold to the
American people on the false assertions that Saddam Hussein is
Adolf Hitler, that our way of life is at clear and present
danger, that we have as much at stake as we did in World War
II. I believe our military action was improperly rationalized,
incompletely thought out and dangerous." But his broader
criticisms spring from his belief that the most serious
problems plaguing the nation are domestic. "Poverty is rising,
particularly among the working poor. Our schools are
deteriorating. We can't go on the way we are in health care.
But with Bush there is no sense of urgency, no challenge to the
American people. There is no leadership. Congress can't provide
it. Only the President can. It's time for him to spend some of
his political capital." Inevitably, this sort of criticism is
hailed by Democrats and dismissed by Republicans as the prelude
to a Kerrey bid for national office. To his discomfort, Kerrey
often is introduced as "the one who will regain the White House
for the Democratic Party." How does he react to such talk? "I
ignore it," says Kerrey. "It's flattering, but I ignore it."
He seems to sense that he may not be ready. But given the
Democrats' abysmal shortage of candidates who are both ready
and willing, Kerrey-for-President talk may continue to resonate
-- to a point that it may become increasingly difficult to
ignore by 1992, impossible by 1996.